Clovelly Video Store Blockbusted

By Marcus Braid on February 5, 2015 in

One of the last remaining video stores in the Eastern Suburbs is closing its doors for good.

Clovelly Blockbuster will close in March after its customer database decreased by a third in the last 12 months.

Rachel Moore, owner of the store for the past ten years with her husband Peter, said they weren’t able to maintain the business without some profitability.

“It is sad and I feel really bad for our loyal customers because there’s going to be nowhere else to go,” she said.

“Just in the last couple of weeks, because there have been a few stores around us close down, there have been people saying ‘thank heavens you’re still here’.

“They say ‘I could do it (rent videos) online, but I really like to browse and see what’s there, and I can’t really do that online’.”

The Clovelly store has reached the end of its contract with Blockbuster Australia, and this, combined with unfavourable resigning conditions, a decreasing customer database and particularly the ease of online downloads, forced the Moores to make the decision to walk away.

“It was really the advent of legally available movies online,” Ms Moore said. “As soon as it became possible and easy for people to download straight to their televisions, it’s just so much more convenient than getting in your car and going off to a video shop.

“You have to take a video back and sometimes there might be scratches, smudges or late fees or all of those sorts of things, and online downloading just does away with all of that stuff.

“I also honestly think there is less interest in movies now as a form of entertainment amongst the 15 to 25 year-olds. In terms of our business, so much of it depends on young people coming in on a Friday night, getting a pizza and watching a movie, and they just don’t do that anymore.”

Ms Moore paid tribute to her staff as “loyal, fabulous and hard working,” particularly Carol Hardie and Linda Heller-Salvador, who have worked at the store for over eight years.

“We’ve got some people who have come in pretty much every week for the ten years that we’ve been there,” she said.